Respect cannot be borrowed; it must be created. Those who have built companies, advanced research, or entered public life abroad are honoured not because they demanded it but because they delivered value. Respect always follows contribution, never the other way around.
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Originally published in NDTV on 8 oct '25.
Centuries ago, caravans and ships braved oceans to reach what India produced. Today, the traffic flows in the opposite direction. It is not goods leaving our shores but young minds, restless to find elsewhere what they cannot build here. This reversal explains why a tweak in an American visa policy can create such tremors at home. The sudden rise in fees for work visas is not just an administrative change; it is a mirror. It shows us how much of our future still depends on the decisions of others.
A Reputation Built On Fear
For long, Indians abroad were described as model migrants: diligent, disciplined, adaptable. The truth is less flattering. That discipline arose less from inner conviction than from fear, the fear of being sent back to the poverty they had escaped. Obedience was a survival tactic, not transformation.
Now the restraint has loosened. Larger numbers and the echo chamber of social media have encouraged louder assertion. With it, some of our least admirable habits travel too: disorder in public spaces, indifference to civic norms, behaviour that unsettles neighbours. A welcome once taken for granted is now turning into irritation. Respect that rests on caution evaporates as soon as caution is abandoned.
